The New York - Mystical Star is on the Rise

The hazy sky gives way to a strange wind that blows with a touch of coolness, blows opposite the direction of the high, dark clouds, and flips the leaves on the trees. A tent light goes on, and then another. The field enters the paddock in order, and the wind picks through their manes, tossing and flipping them. Aruna is uneasy, but not made that way by the forty or so people who move in the paddock. Banimpire, the filly that you would have thought more people would be here to see, moves around alone on her side of the paddock, dark, the black number six blanket complementing her as if by design, a dappled patch there on her hinds above her tail. There is a felling of rain, but not so urgently that anyone is hurrying.

Aruna is still acting tough and is saddled out behind the stalls while The Underling is watched where she is by an outrider, and another pony joins up with Mystical Star as she stands in her stall. But they settle once they circle the ring and move there waiting for their jockeys, and Aruna is calm when Ramon Dominguez is boosted to her back.

The wind us changing direction on the track, blowing down the stretch as they load, as they break. There is no roar from the crowd, but one woman yells 'Go five' as the 64-1 The Underling takes the lead and holds in on to the back. But when she begins to tire, it happens fast, and Mystical Star, who had been sitting a length and one half behind her, moves ahead now and takes the lead, with Hit It Rich sitting just half a length off her. Everyone is waiting for Banimpire to fire, and she seems like she is, like there is a flame beginning at the 3/4s, but it goes out and the race, the action, takes place on the front where Mystical Star, who has been on the lead since The Underling flagged, is facing a hard challenge by Aruna, who had been sitting at the back of the field, but now has burst on the outside with a speed that seems like she might catch the leader, just might have enough time to do it, but the wire catches them as they are, Mystical Star winning, Aruna a length behind her, and Hit It Rich holding on for third.

"Nothing about the trip worked out for us. She didn't break well, went three wide on the turn...", says Chad Brown of Banimpire's effort. But she has a race in her now. A race after eight months. She is one to be watched, but the star that is on the rise today is Mystical.